"Sharing the Wealth"

I guess I will start with fully explaining my stand on the “rich”. First, I am not talking about someone who makes $500,000 a year... they are not the “rich” I am against. I am speaking of the 1% that owns more wealth than the bottom 90% of the population. The same 1% that earns more income annually than the bottom 50% of us. We have the greatest income inequality of any other industrialized country. Wall Street salaries have went from a 20/1 CEO to class worker ration to a 250/1 ratio in the last 8 years. You speak of the horrors of wealth redistribution, yet it has been going on in the United States since the Great Depression... just the other direction. UP. The rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer. And it has led us to where we are today.
“As mass production has to be accompanied by mass consumption, mass
consumption, in turn, implies a distribution of wealth -- not of
existing wealth, but of wealth as it is currently produced -- to
provide men with buying power equal to the amount of goods and
services offered by the nation's economic machinery. Instead of
achieving that kind of distribution, a giant suction pump had drawn into a few hands an increasing portion of currently produced wealth. This served them as capital accumulations. But by taking purchasing power out of the hands of mass consumers, the savers denied to themselves the kind of effective demand for their products
that would justify a reinvestment of their capital accumulations in
new plants. In consequence, as in a poker game where the chips were
concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in
the game only by borrowing. When their credit ran out, the game
stopped."
Sound familiar?? This was stated in 1941 after the Great Depression by Marriner Stoddard Eccles who was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve under FDR. We learn very little from our past. And here we are again. Foreclosures are hitting record highs; Americans are declaring bankruptcy at rates ten times that during the great Depression; more college students drop out because of debts than due to poor grades. We now have one of the highest rates of childhood poverty in the world even though we also have the highest number of billionaires. Our dollars worth is declining daily. Our deficit is the highest in the history of our country. And it is all due to the concentration of wealth into the hands of a few.
The republicans have successfully convinced the upper middle class that they are rich and that a democratic controlled government is going to reach into their pockets and take their money. This is absurd. The American dream is a fantasy they use to control their constituents. The average upper middle class American will never find themselves in that 1% of the population that I feel is destroying our country from the inside out. The same 1% that the republican party so strongly protects. It is an illusion. They plant this seed of fear of losing your money just to keep you from demanding what is rightly yours. The democrats are not going to take your riches because they only exist in your fantasy world.
And speaking of wealth redistribution and “sharing the wealth”, what would you call the $700 billion dollar bailout? Taking money from who.... the middle class tax payer.... and giving it to wall street? Using our taxpayer dollars to buy banks?? Doesn't this sound like evil socialism?? At least in true Socialist states, the government buys up PROFITABLE industries instead of failing ones. I would describe myself as a Democratic Socialist. The right wing has wrongly equated democratic socialism to communism and totalitarianism, which is completely incorrect. To me, Democratic Socialism is the belief that all people are entitled to the basic rights of health care, college educations and workers benefits. We do not want the government to own everything, but for it to ensure that all citizens are provided for equally and in a fair manner within the structure of a democratic society. Many countries in Europe would be described as Democratic Socialist states. Their governments and countries have not collapsed around them either. These same Europeans are the ones that have made the greatest strides in saving us from our current economic crisis. These same European countries have higher currency rates, higher life expectancies and far more efficient infrastructures. Why? Because their wealth is not disproportionately concentrated.
I am not saying every aspect of socialism is acceptable. But I do not understand why our democracy can't evolve? Why can't every American be guaranteed health insurance? Why is that such a bad thing? Why can't every child be guaranteed a college education? Why can't every American worker be entitled to paid vacations? Oh, forgive me, I forgot... it's because we have to protect that 1% of our citizenship that holds all our capital. Their ability to accumulate wealth is far more important than the health and well being of the other 99% of us. And to think that 1% is concerned about us.... and is using all that capital they have hoarded up to create nice cushy jobs with great benefits so we can all live happily ever after is naive to say the least. They already sent those jobs to India or China.